Road to a $1 Million Net Worth | Episode 8

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00]Welcome to episode 8 of Road to a Million-Dollar Net worth. In this series, I walk you through the exact investing decisions I'm making every single month, how my net worth is growing, and the mindset behind each decision. So, if you want to build long-term wealth in a simple and disciplined way, you're in the right place. Now, before we jump into the video, go ahead and comment down below, what is your current net worth goal?

[00:00:17]Mine is $300,000.

[00:00:19]All righty. So, jumping into the net worth calculation, if you don't know how net worth is calculated, all it is is just your assets minus your liabilities.

[00:00:26]It is what you own minus what you owe.

[00:00:28]Now, my portfolio ended the month of April at $166,446.

[00:00:33]Now, we're going to look further into the portfolio in a little bit, you know, throughout this video, but for now, 166K, that's where we ended the month, which is great. The next part of this is the equity that I currently have in my rental property that I keep at 72,000.

[00:00:45]The only way I'm really gaining equity right now is by the mortgage getting paid down by the tenants. It's not necessarily the home appreciating. And again, I say this in every video, I'm only going to update like the home value or the equity probably once every 6 months. So, by the time we do the June series or the June episode of this series, then I'll probably update it then. But 72K, that's pretty much going to sit flat. In my high yield savings account, I have $10,000 just sitting aside for an emergency fund. And then miscellaneous, these are different things like my car value or different camera equipment that I own. Just kind of random things. It's probably around $5,000. And then in my checking and my savings accounts, I typically keep around $3,000 there. So, if you add all these categories up, my net worth is $256,446, which I am extremely hyped about because I am a quarter of the way to a million, which is really cool because when I started this series in the month of August, I was at $213,000.

[00:01:35]So, I'm honestly really excited that I have crossed the 250K mark. And the thing that's really cool here is we saw a really big gain in net worth over the past month because I ended the month of March at 237,000 and then I ended the month of April at $256,000 which is an increase of about $18,572.

[00:01:52]Now during this time the only thing I did to increase like my assets here was just invest $3,09 which means that I saw $15,000 in gains in my portfolio and we'll talk about that in just a second. Overall, the gain on my net worth though is about 6.5% in a single month, which is just incredible. Now, do I expect this type of gain to continue long-term? No, I'm not expecting this thing to be going up four, five, 6% in a month. Again, we saw a couple of lower months for me. The market did drop between, I think it was February and March with the war breaking out. So, we did see a big bounce back there, which is pretty cool. And I finally hit that goal of 250K. So, the next goal is $300,000. I'm curious how long it's going to take me to get there.

[00:02:29]Now, if we actually break down my net worth, like I said, out of that 256K, 64.9 or pretty much 65% of that is my portfolio. My home equity is 28% and then the other accounts are like, you know, 3%, 1%, a lot lower. So, the portfolio is the main thing that we look at each month. And then taking a look at my portfolio, like I said before, it ended the month at 166,000. So, a huge jump. I mean, as you can see here, $15,000 in gains because the market was literally up 10% over the past month, which is insane. And most of my portfolio is in the S&P 500. Although I do have a little bit of SCHD as well as a little bit of VUG, but I have not seen my portfolio make a jump this big ever.

[00:03:05]I've never seen gains of 10 plus,000 in a single month. But it also makes sense because my portfolio is larger now. But in regards to the portfolio jumping like 8 9 10% in a month, the last time I saw this, I believe, was like November of 2023. So it's been a long time. That's kind of what happens when the market dips 5 or 10%. It'll dip 5 or 10% then the market will bounce back pretty quickly. Now, if we get into a full-on crash, I don't know when that will happen, but whenever that does happen, it could be a slow grind back to the top. But that's why we just keep we're always buying. We keep on buying no matter what. And so, like I said before, I finished the month of March at 147K. I invested $3,000. The change between that 166 and the 147 is the $18,000 number.

[00:03:44]Saw $15,000 of gains, which is just crazy. And if you take a look at the S&P 500, since the lows that we saw on March 30th all the way till basically May 1st, we are now up 14% since that low point.

[00:03:56]So crazy bounce back. And this is why you don't panic because you don't know what the market's going to do. You don't know if it's going to bounce back. You don't know if it's going to sell off. So you just got to always be buying.

[00:04:04]Longterm, you're going to be in a really good spot. But this is now an all-time high for my portfolio. So great to see that. I'm very interested to see how these next few months play out because I don't really know what's going to happen, like I said. But, you know, I'm always buying. I'm always consistent. It seems like we just keep having green month after green month. Yeah, I understand the market sold off a little bit for a month there, but we're already bounced back. We're already at all-time highs. So, is that going to continue or what will that actually look like? And then jumping into a breakdown of my portfolio. Now, May 1st, the market didn't really move much, it looked like.

[00:04:32]So, I basically finished, you know, May 1st at 166627.

[00:04:36]But as you can see here, 124,000 of my portfolio is in the S&P 500. I also have $29,000 in SCHD and then $13,000 in VUG.

[00:04:45]And so if we actually look at the diversification of my portfolio, 75% of it is in the S&P 500. I have 18% in SCHG and then 8% in VUG. So I am pretty tech heavy when you look at both VU and VUG.

[00:04:57]But you know I still have that SCHD still having you know that value dividend ETF play just to kind of help me out play a little bit of defense if the market does go down. But overall very happy with how these allocations are performing. Now a newer section that I've added to this series is looking at my 401k match because I recently have unlocked it this year. One thing I did do that was a slight change was I did increase my 401k deposit. So instead of 6% it's now going to be 8%. But the match is still only up to 6%. So before I was putting in 283, they were matching 283. Now I'm putting in 378. They're still only going to match 283. Now the reason I call it a shadow match is because I will not see that match kick in until the month of December. So I'm trying to keep track of it right now.

[00:05:36]That way in December I can expect exactly how much of that match is going to kick in. And so, yeah, I mean, it's just basically a way of me just keeping tabs on that match so that when it kicks in, it should be around the amount that I'm expecting. But that is one small change I did was increase my 401k from 6% to 8%. One thing a lot of people do is every single year when they get a raise, whether it's 2%, 3%, maybe it's 8%. What they do is instead of actually taking the raise, they just increase their 401k percentage. That way, their paychecks stay pretty much the exact same, but then they're now investing more into their 401k, which is a kind of cool trick that I've seen people do.

[00:06:09]Because think about it, if you're already living off of, let's say, $2,500 a month or $3,000 a month and you get a raise, yeah, you could enjoy the extra money, you can do whatever you want with it. But if you've already been living off of it and you can continue to do that, then why not just invest the extra? You know, it does kind of create a little psychological trick there and you're investing more, which is cool.

[00:06:26]So, I did increase the 401k contributions to 8%. When I'm talking about that $3,09 that I invested, this is between my brokerage, my Roth, and my 401k. And another thing I forgot to mention in the last video is my Roth IRA is already maxed out for the year. So, right now, if it's not in the 401k, then it's going straight into the brokerage at this point. So, for example, I invested $3,09 this month. Out of that $30,961 is the 401k. The remaining amount all went into my brokerage there. Now, one thing that I am trying to do this year is invest $40,000 because I think that would be a really cool goal to hit. And so far, the first four months of the year, I have invested $14,152, which is great because we're a third of the way into the year. But I am 35% of the way to the goal. So, I'm pretty much in line with where I want to be. And then if you were to average these four months out and then multiply it by 12, then I would basically be projected to invest around $42,456, which is great. Now, one thing I do need to add here is this is not factoring in the 401k match. that's going to hit in December. So, it actually could be more around like 50K if I did hit that 42K amount. But another thing I should mention is in the month of February, I got my bonus, which is why that number is so much higher than the other months.

[00:07:33]And so, that is skewing it a little bit.

[00:07:34]But I also have a couple of months that are three paychecks, which I believe is July and December this year. So, I think December, we're going to be investing a lot of money with the 41k match kicking in and with the three paychecks, but we got a while before we get there. In the meantime, I'm just focused on me myself investing the $40,000. And then, you know, once that match kicks in, that would be great. Now, if we take a look at my net investing rate for the month, this was great to see. It was 36%. Which is way larger than normal. If you've been following this series for a while, it's normally between like 25 to 30%.

[00:08:02]Now, before I explain the 36%, one thing I did want to say is the reason I look at my net investing rate, which is basically taking the $3,09 and dividing it by my net income that I made for the month. The reason I look at the net investing rate is because I can't control taxes. Why would I factor that into my investing? like I have no control over that. But what I do have control over is what I do with that after tax money. And so that's the main reason I look at net investing rate. If we looked at gross, it's going to be lower. I mean, that just makes sense because your after tax income is lower than your pre-tax income. But still, 36% is a very big jump cuz normally it's around like 25 or 27 or 28%. And the main reason it was at 36% I will talk about in just a second here. Which leads me into my section of the video where I talk about what went really well this past month as well as what did not. And what actually went very well, and I've been saying it for months, I'm glad I finally stuck to it, was I had my first month of not going out to eat almost all month. Like almost every single meal that I ate in the past month, I ate at home or I made it at home or I cooked it and brought it in to work. Like I was eating at home left, right, and center.

[00:09:00]And yeah, I had to spend a little bit more money on groceries, but that saved me a lot of money on going out to eat because every time I go out to eat, I cover for my girlfriend and myself. So, you know, being able to cut back on that, being able to Yeah, sure. to spend a little bit more money on groceries, but I'm okay with that because I'm saving so much money on going out to eat, which was awesome. So, in the month of April, I only went out to eat one time and this was about 3 weeks into April. And honestly, it was kind of mid, which surprised me, too, cuz it was Chick-fil-A. I was really expecting, you know, for it to slap and it just didn't.

[00:09:27]It wasn't hitting the same. But honestly, I'm pretty hyped at the fact that I was able to kind of, you know, quit fast food for the month. Not that I'm sitting here 300 lb struggling with it, but I was eating it a couple of times a week, which just is not healthy.

[00:09:39]And it's just expensive. Like I said, especially when you're covering for two people every single time. I mean, it's like 25 to 30 bucks every single time I go out to eat. And that's not even counting a sitdown restaurant, which I might do once or twice a month, if not more. So, the fact that I was able to, you know, basically overcome this, cook a lot of meals from home, I felt like was great. Was able to lose a little bit of weight, feel a lot better, a lot healthier. I loved it. So, definitely going to try to continue that and find that balance moving forward. Now, I probably could have invested more money throughout the month, but as I've mentioned in some videos, I am saving up for an Italy trip, which I actually am taking here in the month of May. And so, I was spending money on like train tickets, rental cars, things like that.

[00:10:14]The flights were already paid for, but getting the hotels finalized, the train tickets, some of the things that we're going to do in Italy, my girlfriend and I. Getting all that stuff paid off was, you know, pretty important to me. So, I wanted to at least prioritize that. That way, I can just go into the trip and not have to stress as much about money, which is another goal I had earlier this year. That way, I'm not putting it all on my credit card and then paying it later. it's just all covered up front.

[00:10:33]So, that's what went well for me this month, which honestly, this was a very good month on my spending and being more disciplined on that because, yeah, lifestyle inflation, it really can sneak up on you. And if you know, you can fight it and you can counter it, it's only going to help you invest more money, which is great. The only thing that did not go well for me over this past month was honestly just me being an idiot because one of the things that I booked was a train ticket and I booked it on the wrong day. Like, I literally booked it in the month of April. Not even going to be in Italy in the month of April. Like, what the [ __ ] am I doing? And I didn't choose the premium version, so I couldn't get it refunded.

[00:11:02]And so I only got like 20% of my money back. It was a very stupid move. It didn't cost me a lot of money, but you know, it was still enough money for me to be like, "Okay, you got to be a lot more tedious and a lot more detailed and really, you know, triple quadruple check things before you're booking it." That was honestly the only thing that did not go well this month. But still, avoiding little mistakes like that can save you money along the way. So now looking ahead, as I mentioned at the beginning of the video, my next milestone is $300,000. I am curious how long it will take to hit that. It really does depend how the market does, which I have no clue what that'll look like. But again, it would not surprise me if we saw a lot of volatility this year. Yes, we had a great month in April, but May, June, and July could be backto backto back red months. Nobody really knows. So, we're just going to stay the course. The other thing, as I just mentioned, is I'm going on vacation this month, and everything is pretty much paid for besides a few things. So, I am planning on investing less my first paycheck. That way, I have more cash and I don't have to think about it as much while I'm over in Italy. But, it might get a little bit challenging with the spending. So, I want to make sure I'm on top of that and I'm not dumb about it when I'm overseas because I got to stay disciplined even when I'm on vacation. I still want to have fun though. I still want to, you know, have that balance of enjoying things but not spending too much money.

[00:12:07]So, really hoping I do well on that and I think it'll be a good challenge for me. But yeah, that is pretty much the road ahead and that is episode 8 of Road to a Million-Dollar Network. I really hope you guys enjoyed the